Purchase suggestions?
WsCG
Posts: 391
Hello!
So, I will be buying Carrara Wednesday (hopefully the sale is still going on!), via the membership + discount deal y'all told me about.
I'm curious if there are other products anyone would recommend, as in "these are must-have tools/products to have in your modeling/animating toolbox"?
I can't go *too* crazy on buying stuff on Wed, but I can also keep a list of things to get as money allows down the road.
Also, I haven't seen any, but is there a physical box option for Carrara? Call me crazy, but I still like having physical media, with manuals, etc, when I have the option.
Thanks!
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Mitovo, Even Sales can't or will not tell you if the sale is still on then. I checked out the Shop today and entire Daz Store is in mega sale 40-50% off each item... some were even more... sale ends tonight says the banner so I went and grabbed bout half of my Carrara items that were in wishlist.
If at all possible I'd grab Carrara 8.5 Pro before midnight or rather 1am CST. Price will likely jump back up but may even drop more. I'm so confused... it changes so often. :)
As far as I know there is no longer a box, physical manual or even physical CD/DVD for Carrara.
Ugh. Figures. I can't do anything 'til Wed. I don't have the funds. What is it with sales always ending the day before I can take advantage of them? lol Same thing happened to me on a couple other sales elsewhere. My bad luck.
I'll keep an eye on it anyway, maybe I'll get lucky.
Mitovo, see my post again about manual etc which I added a minute ago
Yeah, sometimes they extend the sale.
As for "Must-haves", that completely varies from on eiser to the next. Literally ALL of us use Carrara a bit differently than the rest, whom each use it differently from each other - pretty much! LOL
Here is a decent place to start - a search for all Carrara stuff. Just be careful and read the descriptions because I'm noticing that some things aren't exactly for Carrara.
Carrara Search
Personally, I avoided these (due to price) when I first started out. After getting one, I bought the rest of the collection!
Carrara video courses from Infinite Skills - taught by our very own Phil Wilkes
This thread has some ideas, but I'm not done yet - there's much more to add!
Learning Carrara and need some help?
I know I haven't mentioned MAT Creator yet, and he has some brushes for 3D Paint in Carrara, as well as some nice shaders sets
I was about to post a feature on Howie Farkes, but haven't yet. He has mase some incredible realistic environments of Carrara
You'll find many other ideas in Learning Carrara and need some help?
but if you have something more specific in mind, let us know ;)
Within that thread are links and ideas about mmoir, Fenric makes excellent plugins!
Sparrowhawke has some cool free plugins for Carrara too!
Good grief I finally buy Environment Woodlands earlier this month and coulda saved half off 2nite... o well... that's the way the cookie crumbles. Grabbed a lot 2nite... Fenric products... ones from Howie Farks and others as well as finally VectoryStyle. [happy camper = me]
Since it's less than 30 days you can submit a ticket for the difference.
Thanks... think I do just that.
[edit] did do that... thanks again.
It has jumped to $45.00 today... still not bad... don't forget it's a DAZ original and either coupon should, cross fingers, work with it. Oh gosh just checked you aren't PC+... do you receive a coupon?
Naw, I'm not a PC+ member yet. Can't do that 'til tomorrow, either.
I'll just have to hope I can take advantage of it, or the price hasn't hiked up too drastically. If so, I might just wait for the next sale, and at least I'll already have the PC+ part done.
Is there a reason why so many companies seem to end their sales on a Tuesday? Seems like such an odd day to end something.
The good news is Carrara right out of the box does almost everything, so you don't really have a pressing need for any 'must have' items to make it work
That said, there are plenty of great Carrara products to recommend, hard to specific without knowing more of what the focus of your use will be. For example, Architools is a pretty great plugin, but if you have no interest in creating houses in Carrara, it wouldn't be of much use to you.
PhilW's Carrara courses are tremendous (in the Daz store they are under Infinite Skills). They are pricey though, but you can also get them going to the Infinite Skills dot com website and paying for a monthly membership and viewing them there. I highly recommend them to anyone using Carrara, especially the Realism course; with the right render settings, Carrara can give results closer to an unbiased render engine (like Octane, Iray, Luxrender, Thea, etc) than any other biased render engine I've seen. On the other hand, if you want an actual unbiased render engine, there is Luxus, Luxcore, and Octane plugins for Carrara too.
You can't go wrong with any of Fenric's plugins, in particular I use Shader Doctor a lot.
If dynamic clothing is important, than you will want Virtualworlddynamic's cloth plugin available over at Rendo.
A lot of people come to Carrara just to be able to render HowieFarke's superb landscape scenes. Though they aren't really plugins but rather pre-made scenes, it can be very instructive to 'take them apart' to see how they are built and then build your own similar landscapes. TangoAlpha has also been turning out some exquisite landscape scenes too, as does Mike Moir (who also has some very good instructional vids on modeling in Carrara).
Also don't forget that Carrara can network render, so if you've got more than one computer, you can use your 2nd computer as a render node to add even more/faster rendering power. Carrara already renders fast, but no harm in adding more power to the mix if you can. This isn't any add on or plugin, just something that's often overlooked, so it's worth mentioning.
One of the best add-on features of Carrara costs $0: this forum. It's an invaluable resource filled with lots of very nice people (and one troll that appears from time to time) who are very willing to answer questions and give tips at any hour. I've found this forum invaluable, so I'll list it as a very important resource to tap.
That's nice of you to say FMPCM, I had something similar happen last year and was advised by DAZ NOT to advertise the fact that they honoured that. I bought something at a decent sale price, then the next day, it was reduced even further! And it was not a cheap item at the time either.
I get this rubbish from certain online appliance warehouses who change their prices up to 3X a day... talk about chasing performance. Thought that was a stock market thing.
Hi all.. Thanks for all the info/feedback!
Well, in terms of what I plan to do with Carrara... For now, I'd say "improve my skill and knowledge with it". To that end, I intend to do some smaller, but increasingly complex projects. I'm starting with modeling for now, then will move on to texturing/materials/UVMapping, then will move on to animation, lighting and rendering; basically covering all the bases. I probably won't do everything entirely in that order, and I'm going to stay *very* simple at the start, to make the progression a bit faster. I'm thinking I might just do a simple still life project with some spheres, cubes, etc.. just to get a feel of the workflow.
After that, I have plenty of stories and scenes that I'd like to create. I suppose it would do me good to dig into the additional tools for Carrara. To be honest, every time I look at the store, it's overwhelming, with all the different addons there are. It's hard to know where to begin looking lol.
Anyway, thanks again for the feedback!
I'd suggest that you concenrate on learning the tools and functons in Carrara, ...before adding any plug-ins,.
Carrara has a load of features,. and learning all of the tools can take time and experimentation to build your skill level to the point where it becomes comfortable,.
adding new plugins when you're trying to learns the basics of any software, can add to the confusion.
When you reach a point where you think they you've reached a limitation of carrara,. ask here,. and if the advice is that you need a plugin,. go get the plugin :)
Carrara Scenes are a different matter,.
Scenes are built in carrara, for carrara, by carrara artists,. so, they can help you learn by example.
Ask questions here,. the Carrara forum is full of helpful people.
Good advice, that. Thanks!
Yeah, learning the core program is definitely Priority 1. With all the additional add-ons and such, though, I thought there might be some that would be good "essentials" to have as well.
As it stands, I'm psyched that the pro version comes with characters and such, as many of my future projects involve people.
Speaking of which... Carrara supports Genesis 1, but not 2 or 3, right? Or is it 1 and 2? Also, are all the various packs available for DAZStudio also compatible with Carrara? So if I buy, say, a certain pack for a Genesis figure, will it also work in Carrara? Or does Carrara have its own dedicated kits?
Thanks!
The Genesis 1 and 2 figures work in Carrara, but not Genesis 3. Most content works in Carrara, but there are some exceptions. For example, most G1 and G2 morphs work in Carrara, but not the HD morph packs. Geografts (special category of body replacement parts) do not work in Carrara. Most shaders need to be adjusted, but they have the information to work. For example, reflection maps may come in too strong or bump maps might not load. You may have to do a one-time adjustment to shaders the first time youload, and then save the result to your shader browser for one-click correction in the future.
One other thing to help you learn are the Carrara challenges these are sponsored by DAZ and some PA's and are a great way to learn and get feedback on what you are doing right or if you are having difficulty with something. there are more than one way to do most things in Carrara so as a group we keep learning and getting better with it.
Carrara works with generation 3 and 4 as well as genesis 1 and 2, gen 3 makes it crash.
Most items for upto Gen 2 work no problem with Carrara, you will not need skydomes with Carrara as it has its own realistic sky genertor as well as a terrain generator.
Awesome. Thanks for the info/details.
Okay, so just to be sure I understand the 'hierarchy' of the different "series"... because I've never been able to find an official "outline" of the setup...
Everything starts with a "Base...", which would be, say Genesis 1, Genesis 2, etc.. From the "Base", you'd have "customized" variations which might be given a name like 'Michael', or 'Julia' or something like that. Then, from that, you'll have special hair or skin or other 'kits' that are designed specifically for those variations...
So a tree view might be...
Genesis 1
|
|--- Michael
| |
| | - "kit for Michael" 1
| | - "kit for Michael" 2
|
|--- Julia
|
|- "kit for Julia" 1
|- "kit for Julia" 2
Do I have the right idea?
Thanks!
Sort of. :)
A quick summary:
Michael 1 through 4 and Victoria 1 through 4.2 all predate Genesis and were each stand-alone base figures that you could buy characters for (usually a combination of morphs and new skin materials). Michael 4 and Victoria 4 (really 4.2, since that was the last update to the figure) are still very popular and vendors on other sites continue to actively make clothing and new characters for them.
After their 4th generation figures they switched to Genesis. Genesis was a unisex base figure you could buy customized variations for (including Michael 5 and Victoria 5 and a whole bunch of other characters with "5" in the name). The great thing about Genesis was that since it was a single figure you could easily use the same clothing for both the male and female unlike earlier generations. Victoria 4 clothing cannot be used with Michael 4 for example. Genesis could also use the same UVs as the 4th generation so you could use all the old skin materials that so many of use had accumulated libraries full of with the new figures.
Genesis 2 they split back into two base figures (a male base and a female base) and you can get customized characters for each (including Michael 6 and Victoria 6 and a whole bunch more with "6" in the name). Via auto-fit you can use clothing for the male figure with the female (I think you may need to buy an additional add-on to do this? I can't remember for sure though) as well as most clothing from the 4th generation figures.
Genesis 3 is the latest, also split into two base figures (a male base and a female base again) that you can buy customized characters for (including Michael 7 and Victoria 7 and all the other "7's"). Genesis 3 changed a lot of things, including the weight mapping and UV maps, from prior generations that prevent it from working properly in Cararra at the moment. Debate continues on when we'll ever see this in Carrara; although at some point DAZ did say they were working on at least part of the problem, there is no ETA. You can still pose the characters in DAZ Studio and export them as .OBJ then import and render in Carrara but it's far from an ideal solution compared to the native-use of all the earlier generations.
It can be a litle confusing at times if you are late to the game since Genesis 1 is actually the fifth generation of DAZ figures. So your tree is essentially correct, except the "kits" for Genesis (1) would all be version 5, not version 1 (even when the character did not exist for previous generations, the 5 was usually added to the name so you knew it went with Genesis).
So your tree would look more like:
Genesis 1 (base)
|
|--- kit for Victoria 5
|
|--- kit for Michael 5
Genesis 2
|
|--- Genesis 2 Female (Base)
| |
| | - kit for Victoria 6
|
|--- Genesis 2 Male (Base)
|
|- kit for Michael 6
But you had the basic idea.
On the right track. Slight variation.
Long ago in tech time, Daz released human mesh figures to be used in the program Poser. These were called the millenium figures. The woman was Victoria and the man was Michael. In hindsight, they are now called V1 and M1 for Victoria 1 and Michael 1. These meshes were rigged so that they could be used in the Poser program, and thus the file system was Posers. The poseable figures were in a "character" folder. Static props were in a "prop" folder. There were folders for poses, expressions, hands.
Over time, Daz released improved generations of figure meshes. Each generation had its own Victoria and Michael. V1-4 and M1-4 were still designed to fit in Poser's file structure and work seamlessly in Poser. One of the updates of Carrara allowed for these generation 1-4 figures to load natively in Carrara using the Poser file structure.
Then Daz released the first Genesis figure mesh designed primarily for Daz Studio, and only able to be used in Poser with significant adjustment. Furthermore, the entire file structure was different. So, Genesis 1 is really the 5th generation of Daz figures. Thus, Genesis 1 includes Victoria 5 and Michael 5. Carrara was updated from C8.1 to C8.5 in order to allow Genesis figure meshes and rigging to work in Carrara. Genesis 2 (6th generation so includes Victoria 6 and Michael 6) also works in Carrara.
However, genesis 3 (Daz's 7th generation of figure meshes) uses a figure system that does not work in Carrara. Thus, Victoria 7 and Michael 7 will not work in Carrara natively.
So, when looking at figures and associated products, it can get confusing. For named figures, such as Stephanie, David, Michael, Victoria, etc. you can be reasonably confident that they will work in Carrara if numbered up to 6. If they are numbered 1 trough 4, they use the old Poser file structure and rigging system. If they are numbered 5 or 6, they use the genesis generation meshes and rigging systems.
Bottom line, Genesis 1 or 2 = OK, but Genesis 3 is not OK.
Named figures (Victoria/Michael) 1-6 = OK, but 7 is not OK.
LOL.
@diomede and I were apparently writing novels in parallel. :)
@MDO and diomede
Wow, quite the head-spin digesting all that lol. But I think I get it. So, where Carrara's concerned, I only need to be concerned with anything numbered 1-6, but particularly 5 and 6, as they relate to Genesis 1 and 2 respectively. So, 5 and 6 are what I want to look for when it comes to content/kits for the different figures, and I should be good to go in Carrara.
Okay, I think narrowing it down to that basic setup is going to help me a lot, 'cause I've gotten a bit confused going through the shop looking at everything. I usually just end up looking at and appreciating the detail that goes into so much of it. I was looking at this before (for Genesis 3, of course lol), and was just blown away by the amount of detail that went into that texturing. You can see the light hairs on their cheeks, blemishes, pores, etc. Seriously amazing stuff.
Anyway... Thanks!
@MDO and diomede
Wow, quite the head-spin digesting all that lol. But I think I get it. So, where Carrara's concerned, I only need to be concerned with anything numbered 1-6, but particularly 5 and 6, as they relate to Genesis 1 and 2 respectively. So, 5 and 6 are what I want to look for when it comes to content/kits for the different figures, and I should be good to go in Carrara.
Okay, I think narrowing it down to that basic setup is going to help me a lot, 'cause I've gotten a bit confused going through the shop looking at everything. I usually just end up looking at and appreciating the detail that goes into so much of it. At least now I know exactly what to set on the search filters, and all the guess-work has been removed.
I was looking at this before (for Genesis 3, of course lol), and was just blown away by the amount of detail that went into that texturing. You can see the light hairs on their cheeks, blemishes, pores, etc. Seriously amazing stuff.
Just caught this, too... It's Vampire Tori Amos!
Anyway... Thanks!
Each was very informative and very appreciated!
as has been said, Fenric's plugins will make your carrara world a better place
welcome to carrara :)
Just my opinion (but I'm 100% right and anyone who disagrees obviously hates babies/worships Satan/eats their bread butter-side-down) but Genesis1 is the best all round figure out there, and best of all it comes with Carrara pro (along with Michael 5 and Victoria 5, which are Genesis1 shape morphs).
So I wouldn't sweat it that you can't use Genesis3 natively with Carrara, and in fact you may not need to do a whole lot of searching among even Genesis2, as you can do pretty much anything with Genesis1, including put whatever clothes for any other figure on Genesis1 and have it fit (this takes either some of the clothing clones for the other figures, or alternately you can just pop the clothing into the Carrara modeling room and adjust it to fit Genesis1, then re-rig it in Studio so it works great on Genesis1; it's so easy even I can do it. I'm thinking of putting together a tutorial vid showing how, if I can ever find the time...)
Judging from the renders you linked, you may be into realism rendering, and yes Carrara can definitely do that. Those renders you pointed out were both done in Iray, which is an unbiased render engine. Carrara's native render engine is not unbiased, but with the correct settings you can get similar realism (and since Carrara has dynamic strand hair, you can actually get even better realism in some respects) but do remember that it is not an unbiased render engine. If it's really important to you to have an unbiased render engine like Iray, then there are plugin options for Carrara including Luxus, Luxcore, and Octane.
Welp, I'm now a Platinum Member, and have Carrara 8.5 Pro registered! Managed to get it on the $45 deal, so all good there!
I like photo-realism, but I like stylized, cartoony, etc.. as well. I was just really impressed by how much detail they got on the Genesis 3 character, and was amused that the second one I linked looks like Vampire Tori Amos.
Can't type long here, gotta get ready for work, but just wanted to drop in and say that I've taken the plunge, and have my water wings on :p
Thanks for the info/advice!
I purchased Mimic Pro for about $34. :)
Now I just have to figure out how to use it. :|